THE PLACE: CaiE's Oriental Cafe, in the Smith's shopping center on South Meadows Parkway, serves up delicious Chinese food with lightning-fast service on the south side of town. There's a dim sum menu with seven items, soups, salads, traditional American Chinese restaurant fare and a limited beer and wine selection.

THE LOOK: Clean and light, with the owner's beautifully detailed pen-and-ink artwork of Chinese scenes on one wall and windows opening onto a view of the mountains to the west.

THE MEAL: We start with the vegetable spring rolls ($3.25) and an after-lunch order of three pork buns ($3.50). The latter puts us over the $20 budget but look too delicious to pass up. The pork buns are steamy, sticky and softly doughy — not the dry, bready things too often served around here — with a large dollop of savory pork filling. The menu says the dim sum is made by a dim sum master at CaiE in Sparks, and the freshness is evident.

The Szechuan tofu ($7.95) is some of the best I've had in Reno: fresh and fried to a lightly crisp exterior that yields easily to the tooth, with a creamy, custardy interior. The sauce is mild — if you prefer a kick, ask the kitchen to turn up the heat a notch. Diners get a choice of brown or white rice, $1 extra if not part of the lunch special, but with refills. I choose brown, and the fat, tender grains pick up the flavor of the sauce nicely.

The Mongolian chicken ($8.95) features big slices of white-meat chicken and onions in a smoky, savory sauce. It's flavorful, but not overly spicy. The portions are generous: We take home enough for two more meals.

KUDOS: The woman who servs us is impeccably polite and prompt, and the food comes in a flash. My dining companion is a regular at CaiE's, and he's mildly disappointed that his usual server is not there on the day we go. This man, my companion says, is so attentive, warm and charming, he "makes you glad to be alive." I'm definitely planning a return trip in the hopes of meeting this exceptional being.

QUIBBLES: The vegetable spring rolls are merely OK. They are hot and crisp on the outside, but the filling is unremarkable in flavor and texture.

ALTERNATIVES: For the two-for-$20 diner, there are many options. A dim sum sampler is $9.35, with pork and chicken potstickers and shrimp and chicken siu mai. Weekday lunch specials run $6.75 for vegetables or tofu, $7.25 for chicken or pork, $8.25 for beef and $8.75 for shrimp in your choice of preparations: kung pao, sweet and sour, Mongolian, tangerine, supreme soy or garlic.

There are also the standards, including: General Tso's chicken ($8.75), mixed vegetables in garlic sauce ($7.75), and broccoli beef ($9.75).

RETURN TRIP?: Oh, yes. I hope to have been there already by the time you read this.